lunes, 20 de agosto de 2012

E. coli outbreak in Hokkaido kills seven, sickens over 100 others.

Most affected were elderly women who were
fed the dirty cabbage at nursing homes.

A major food-poisoning outbreak in Hokkaido
has killed seven people, including a 4-year-old child, and sickened more than 100
others who ate pickled cabbage tainted with E.
coli bacteria, health officials said Sunday.

In what is being described as the nation's
deadliest food-poisoning outbreak in a decade, six of those who died were
elderly women who were fed the dirty cabbage at nursing homes. According to
health bulletins issued by the Hokkaido Prefectural Government, the six women
died at nursing homes in Sapporo and Ebetsu. The 4-year-old girl died on Aug.
11 after exhibiting food-poisoning symptoms, also in Sapporo. Some 103 people
have apparently been sickened by the same item — a lightly pickled Chinese
cabbage produced in late July by a Sapporo-based company, the bulletins said.

In
Ebetsu, a female centenarian died early Sunday from multiple-organ failure,
nine days after being hospitalized and 18 days after eating the cabbage, A Hokkaido
health official said "She ate the
pickles at breakfast at her nursing home on Aug. 1," health official
Narihiko Kawamura said by telephone.

The Sapporo girl died five days after
developing E. coli symptoms, an
official at the Sapporo public health center said. "She and her family
used to eat the company's pickled cabbage, which they often bought at a local
supermarket," the Sapporo official, Seiichi Miyahara, said by telephone.
"But it is not certain when she ate the contaminated product."

Two of the other nursing home fatalities
were in their 90s and died on Thursday, also in Ebetsu, about 10 days after
being hospitalized with E. coli
symptoms.

"It is not easy to determine how the
bacteria got mixed with the pickled cabbage," the official said. "We
don't know whether there was a major problem with sanitation control at the
company yet."

In 2002, nine people were killed by E. coli infections after eating a
marinated chicken and vegetable dish at a hospital and an annex that was a
nursing home for the aged in Utsunomiya more than 370
people were hit by suspected food poisoning during weekend sporting events in
Tochigi Prefecture.

Approximately 200 people attending a junior high school
field hockey tournament in the city of Nikko fell ill on Saturday, while about
170 people, many of them middle school students, complained of food poisoning
symptoms at a softball event in Nasushiobara. People at the two events had
boxed lunches prepared by the same company in Nasushiobara. One student was
hospitalized, but presently she is not in serious condition.